


Scheherazade

by worldturtling



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Axel with a heart, Canon divergence (probably), Happy Ending, Keyblade weilder Axel, M/M, Slice of Life, axel pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8403166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldturtling/pseuds/worldturtling
Summary: Axel's story has always been pulled forward by the idea of Roxas surviving. Post kh2, Post BBS, and post- that scene Sora tells Roxas he's his own person.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I only saw cutscenes of one of the newer games and I started writing this as soon as I found out Axel/Lea was now a keyblade weilder. I was heavily influenced by my own wtf-ness at the history of the keyblade masters. Also written like two years ago- published now! Found it in my google docs and finished it. Anyway this is how I imagined his training going.

 

It happens one night in Agrabah.

He’s in a bar. Well, correction. He’s in a thief’s den in Agrabah because the drinks are cheap and no one asks questions and he’s decided to take the night off from aimlessly wandering and being randomly accosted by heartless. He’d briefly wondered if there was some sort of keyblade wielder code about drinking, or going into bars with known convicts. But considering most of the keyblade masters that were are dead, mostly by their own dumbass crafting, Axel feels justified in making up his own code.

  
He sees him after about an hour.

  
“Should you really be drinking that much when you’re gonna have to keep training in the morning?” and Axel is pretty inebriated by now so when he turns and sees that spiky blonde hair that can’t decide a direction to save its life and those Bombay sapphire blue eyes (so sue him, he had a drink preference) that tend to leave him thinking he’s drowning, he just goes with it.

  
“Should you be in here when I’m pretty sure there’s an age limit that says no pipsqueaks?” He proceeds to knock another shot back. Roxas makes a little huff noise. In the back of his very not sober mind Axel wildly wonders why the one time he decides to drink his problems away as a complete being, he’s got to have a weird subconscious lookalike of his dead best friend nagging him. Didn’t he deserve at least one nice thing?

  
-

  
“Why do you go by Axel, when that’s your nobody?” Roxas asks, and Axel figures it’d be just like his subconscious to be needlessly existential when he was just trying to get shitfaced.

  
“Well for one,” Axel raises two fingers unbeknownst to him, “no one seems to give a fuck what I want to call myself, and another thing,” he splays out his hand and crooks it up at the wrist, “lets be real, I’d probably do the same shit I did as a nobody all over again if push came to shove. Feel crappy about it maybe. Who can know? But to be completely honest with you, shorty, I don’t really feel all that different than from when I was a nobody, you feel me?” he winks. “I still got most of my old moves after all.” He leers purposefully, and receives a disgusted look in response.

  
“So you’re saying you don’t feel any different with a heart?” Axel swears a little.

  
“Yeah I do. I feel everything. I’m alive!,” he yells a little too loudly that other patrons of the thief den spare him guarded glances.

Roxas is glaring right back at them, and Axel thinks it’s cute.

“I’m so fucking alive baby,” Axel leans in close to a shocked expression and croons, “I’m gonna show you what I’m all about.”  
-

He wakes up in his bed in the little closet room of an inn he was staying at, and Roxas is still there. He has no recollection of leaving the bar. He vaguely remembers getting up to congratulate the belly dancers on their excellent hand motions but that was also pretty hazy. He opens his eyes and regrets it, his throbbing temples indicating shit was about to come up. He tries to move his face and open his eyes to take in the sunlight, but the whole right side of his face hurts.

  
He lands a palm over his eyes and presses down. A sinking feeling approaches him, sad and volatile as he remembers Roxas in his dreams, seemingly so real. However they made drinks here, he was still completely fucked and never doing that again. Not even absinthe that one time had kicked his ass and his heart so thoroughly.

He slowly creaks his eyes open, resigned to whatever isolated existence faced him.

And then suddenly, a sense hits him like a freight train. He doesn’t need to see to know. He could be dead and he would know.

Roxas is still there.

“Good, you’re awake.” He snaps his eyes open and jerks his head to the right, instantly regretting it because a moment after glimpsing the image of Roxas in the room’s sole chair, looking uncomfortable and drinking something from a little mug, a poignantly familiar memory, Axel promptly heaves. Into a conveniently placed bucket on the side of the bed.

  
-

“You’re here?” He rubs his temples and wishes for the strongest pot of coffee ever, trying to lift himself and having plans to travel to the adjoined bathroom. “How? Why? Aren’t you supposed to be in Sora?” He blanches at the inelegant wording, but forgives himself given the circumstances.

“I saw you were going to do something stupid so I came along to make sure you wouldn’t get your ass killed. Now come on, get up, you need to continue your training.” Roxas nods vaguely down and to Axel’s side, presumably indicating where a keyblade might be summoned. And Axel is only a little certain that if his mind was going to conjure up an image of his dead best friend, he maybe would have some sort of decency to at least feel sympathy for Axel right now. He successfully heaves himself towards the sink.

  
“Have you seen my mug? I can’t go out with a busted up jaw,” he stretches his face, “or eye.” he rubs his face with cold water from the little bathroom sink. “Did you see how I got this anyway?”

  
“I did it,” he hears Roxas mutter sheepishly.

Axel winces at the purple blooming on his chin and briefly recalls how strong he may have been coming on to his then imagined dead best friend.  
He spots Roxas looking at his feet through the mirror, almost a little bashfully. Everything sinks in.  
And okay, after Axel grabs Roxas by the shoulder to feel him and make sure he’s not a ghost, grabbed him like he used to way back when they were other people who knew less than they did now, and physically feels Roxas starting to slip away from him and enter a void, Axel backs the fuck off and is too fucking sober for this morning. Or too under caffeinated he’s not sure which right now.  
“Yeah I’d refrain from too much touching,” Roxas says casually, wiping a nonexistent fleck off his transparency decreasing shoulder.

“I need a drink,” Axel says decisively.

“No.” Roxas cuts in severely. “I made it all the way here to make sure you didn’t kill yourself while learning how to use the keyblade, which by the way I still think was a stupid decision on your part considering you’ve been up close to the bad news keyblade wielders get dealt, and I’m not gonna sit by and watch you drink yourself into another coma. Get your ass in gear, we got heartless to free.”

  
If the fierce beating in Axel’s chest is anything to go by, seeing Roxas in full form righteous and purposeful and fiery still has the same effect on him as it did on his nobody. Only with actual heart beating instead of chemical adrenaline and a possible faux feeling of rushed blood Roxas’ presence would tend to inspire in his nobody.

So he gulps and he nods and he follows Roxas out the door.

And dodges into the nearest café because he was still human okay and was still nursing a hangover and would it make it better if Axel got Roxas some baklava?  
-  
The cool thing about being a keyblade wielder was that it was a paying profession. In the organization, they’d had an expense account that Axel had been banned from using after only his second off world mission. After that it was five finger discounts and nabbing things that were subsequently hid in the endless and unknowable nebulae that were the pockets of his organization uniform.

The not so cool thing about being a keyblade wielder is that your only source of income literally came from killing the things that were trying to kill you first. And Axel didn’t want to think too much on the varying amounts of munny that would come from different level heartless. Because didn’t heartless come from people? And then isn’t that essentially assigning value to individuals and deciding some were just worth more? And who decided that?

And that was a lie, he actually totally thought about it and shared these thoughts with Roxas who told him to shut up and duck and then Roxas dragged him to one of those little shops and made Axel spend his hard earned life staking munny… on some low ass healing potions.

“And you definitely need to work on varying your spell casting. You can’t just light everything on fire.” Roxas added. And Axel isn’t sure who made him a keyblade master all of a sudden, but Roxas was personally taking charge of Axel’s oversized key fighting education and Axel found himself just going with it.

“So can you summon one too?” Axel asks. They’re on the battlements of Notre Dame, eating crepes. It’s not a clock tower or sea salt icecream, but Roxas seems to tolerate it all the same.

“Maybe. I don’t think so though, and I wouldn’t wanna try.” He looks at his half eaten crepe, nutella dripping down the side. Apathetic about all other deserts apparently.

“Why not?”

“I wouldn’t wanna do anything to take away from Sora. He needs… we need all the strength we have.”

“Roxas,” Axel starts… and stops. What did he want to say?

“You and Sora… you’re not him, Roxas.” Axel says and Roxas shrugs. He expects Roxas to shoot him down immediately, but instead he turns his head slightly to the side at peers at him.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well I mean, me for instance. When I was a nobody,… the tattoos sure but other than that, he had red hair and so do I. We both got model good looks, tall elegance,” Roxas snorts next to him, “but you and Sora. You’re both… you’re different. I mean, the hair,” Axel finishes off with because that should explain everything really. But seeing Roxas needed more convincing, he soldiers on, “And you got better taste in shoes than he does. And another thing-“

“Sora said the same thing to me,” Roxas cuts in.

“About the shoes?” Axel is greeted with a sidelong look and he carefully rephrases. “When?” Axel wondered how much of a voice Roxas had while in Sora. Did his nobody have a voice inside him?

Except Roxas was very different from anything he ever wasn’t.

“A little while ago.”

“Well he’s right for once, look at that.”

“If I’m ever gonna have my own life, my own heart, I need to trust him to do it.”

Axel wants to tell him that’s bullshit, Roxas doesn’t need a heart, probably already has one, the way he’s made Axel feel even when he wasn’t supposed to feel would contradict whatever silly idea Roxas had in his head about not being real, not having a heart.  
But he sits there and says nothing because Roxas probably already knew a lot of that too. He just needed the proof. And Axel couldn’t give him that.

-

He’s on a spaceship, and he’s been fighting heartless for what feels like hours and his arms hurt and he just wants to leave. But Roxas is in his corner like a ghostly threatening cheerleader heartless don’t seem to be aware of, telling him he can’t stop yet, and they had three more chests to find.

First of all, how the fuck does he know that. Second, Axel is still having a hard time getting over how his very presence in a new world makes random objects appear for him to scout out. He’s found them in private residences before (boy was that wizard shocked), and on top of roofs. He’s had to use a fountain to catapult himself up to find one which Roxas thought he was crazy for, but hey it works.

When they run into the big kahuna of the space ship, probably the guy who runs the place, he puts Roxas in a cage.  
Axel promptly proceeds to lose his shit. It’s not that he blacks out, he just ends up running on instinct honed by months of paranoia and espionage while living with the organization; that, and all the brute force fire can give him. And once the guy is passed out, [presumably, Axel can’t find a pulse on the giant thing], Roxas runs at him, slams him down onto the floor and tells him to get them the fuck out of there.

Axel’s problems following directives never applied to when Roxas looked that scary.

Against Yen Sid’s better advisement he uses a darkness portal to get them out fastest. And into a hotel room that is blessedly unoccupied.  
And then he’s pushing Axel against a wall.

“What were you thinking?” he’s gripping onto his cloak and his face is a narrow and pinpointed rage directed up, up, up, at Axel.

“Saving you,” Axel says a tad defensively. Wasn’t it obvious. He swears he can hear Roxas growling. “He had you in a cage, what was I supposed to do?”

“ _Talk_ to him, you idiot. You didn’t even talk to him.” Roxas’ yell makes Axel flinch. He shoves Axel once then steps away, just to round on him again in a short circle.

“You’re not a nobody anymore, right? You have a heart, and people who have hearts don’t kill shoot first! You’re wielding a keyblade, you can’t do this!”

Axel feels a small ripple of anger in his stomach. He covers his pounding chest with his palm.

“Yeah, I have a heart now, so what. It doesn’t change who I am. I know who I’ve killed and what I’ve done, heart or not I’d probably do it again if it meant I could save you.”

Roxas glares. He shakes his head. “Don’t make me your cause, Axel.” His tone is deafening, and Axel feels chilled by it.

“You’re right,” he says, and it’s a bitter acknowledgment. “It’s the whole reason though, see. I wanted a keyblade. To protect the ones I love. To protect you.”

Roxas’ frown slants heavily to one side. And he nods.

“I know,” he sighs, like it’s expected, and that makes Axel feel hollow.

He feels Roxas take his hand.

“You’re predictable, Axel.” He says in a tired voice as he pulls off the black leather by the ring finger.

Roxas’ palm is warm over his, which he didn’t expect. Something about the world that never was, everything decided to exist at an absolute nonexistent temperature. Zero. Their leather was excellent barriers but they lived with cold inside all of them. Axel was one of the lucky ones, he could make anything hot.  
They never felt warm to each other though.

Roxas’ palm is hot over Axel’s, and his other is gripping the strings of his coat and tugging. Axel goes down, choking on questions. They kiss, and all his questions boil down to one simple gut need.  
_Stay with me._  
-

Lea knew he was as much Axel as Axel was Lea like this.

Roxas looks at him, sharp blue eyes like needles in his heart and stomach. The same feeling from forever ago, in another lifetime or the same one.  
It didn’t matter whether Axel was Lea or Lea was someone else. He, regardless of name or persona, needed Roxas. It wasn’t a contrived need. He would be the first to admit it wasn’t the most healthiest of motivations that drove him either, (just look at how he ended up during the last ruckus that was him finding an identity and discovering it heavily defined itself with a hell bent mission of finding Roxas and turning into combustion man to do it).

But these were the facts.

Whether he had a heart or not, Roxas was essential to its existence.  
-  
In a surprise that actually shocks no one, not Yen Sid and least of all Roxas, Axel turns out exceptionally gifted with flame elemental spells.  
And Axel will sheepishly hope and wait for Yen sid’s beard to grow back before another visit, but to be fair the guy posited Roxas going back into Sora.  
-  
Roxas kisses him in a small crowded and smelly tavern after a long day Axel spent underwater, separated from Roxas,as a mutated creature with gills, trying to find a lost sea princess who as it turns out also had both fiery red hair and a great singing voice. She was just trapped in a cave by some rocks, no biggie. Took Axel a while to bail her out though because he couldn’t use fire underwater, obviously. And he would be dead before he admitted Roxas was right about Axel developing the other parts of his key blade wielding.

But he returns victorious, and finds himself transformed, finally, on a beach, enveloped in a tackle hug by someone shorter but with more muscle mass. He finds himself stumbling into a bar, exhausted and listening to Roxas lip bitingly go over his day of waiting for signs of Axel, looking for him all over town, how could the world separate them like that, etc, while Axel casually sipped sailor piss beer.

And then Roxas concludes his tale of anxiety and aggressive tourism adventuring by wrapping a warm palm around the back of Axel’s neck, (how was he so warm?) and craning Axel’s face down to meet his mouth.

He smells a little like fish, Axel thinks. Then realizes he probably also smells like a fish. He thinks his hair smells like decayed fish considering he washed up on the shore where all the fishermen gutted their catches. And Roxas was still kissing him.

That had to be some kind of love. It enthused him.  
-

Riku is about as pleased to see Axel as Axel is to see lint. Roxas is a little more vicious.

Axel honestly didn’t expect to run into him in this no man’s zone of frigid winter while they rescued some dogs so they could deliver some meds in a town over. Axel felt it was a rather humanitarian thing of him to do.

Riku was a little bit more obtuse about everything.

“What did you do with the dogs?” he asked Axel, and then immediately after spotting Roxas, proceeded to ignore Axel’s explanation about the lost medicine, and his cool developed ability to talk to dogs, and everything else entirely.

“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in Sora?”

“Way to ask redundant questions,” Axel scoffs but is unheard by the other two.

“Why? you gonna kidnap me and take me hostage again?” Roxas grits out. Axel forgot about that look. That glare.  
He hadn’t seen it since the last time they left that dumb virtual town in some virtual flames.

“Seriously, Roxas. Is Sora okay with you here like this?”

“Sora gave me his permission, if that’s what you need to know.” Riku makes something that dully sounds like a frustrated sound. Roxas crosses his arms and looks.

“But how? How are you here?” Riku asks bewildered tones and Axel’s gotta say he’s feeling them. He’s just been ignoring them while everything’s been good.

Roxas lowers his eyes and fists.

“Because Sora shared a little of his heart with Lea.” he says in a murmured voice.

At that exact moment, Axel clutches his chest because he can’t help it.  
.  
-  
“The stronger your heart grows, the more strength it gives us,” Roxas murmurs later that night, having left Riku in a blizzard and Axel finding them a nice cozy cabin the dogs told him about.

Axel just relishes in the skin under his fingertips. Roxas is warm and solid and real. No matter what any dumb white haired freak said.  
-  
They end up on a mission in Twilight Town, assigned by Yen Sid, and Axel hates it. He’s grumpy the whole time while Roxas is at his side unusually laconically silent. It felt like Roxas had become much more open to openly and sarcastically jeering Axel’s attempts at anything lately, usually in good humor Axel appreciated, but Axel summarily believes Twilight Town brings out the worst in people.

He hungers for chakrams now, their vicious slings and slicing as they curled fire in the air.

But he suppresses that rage down at the sight of Roxas staring after a gaggle of teens.

“There are so many people who have been lost… all because of nothing,” Roxas’ voice sounds unusual and distant. He doesn’t like it.

“This place is the dumps. Let’s take a train and get out of here.”

“Yeah.” Roxas agrees but not with much enthusiasm.

This time Axel says fuck the mission, and for once Roxas doesn’t say anything. 

-

If there's one thing Axel knows, it's this: When it comes to Roxas, he never learned how to stop. 


End file.
